A MILESTONE FOR THE SAFETY NET IN SAN DIEGO

On Monday, San Diego formally launches its biggest, boldest and most expensive effort ever to reduce homelessness on the streets of downtown. If successful, it will serve as a model for this region and beyond in its aggressive and multipronged approach to one of every big city’s most intractable problems.

Mayor Bob Filner, City Council members Todd Gloria and Kevin Faulconer, county Supervisors Greg Cox and Ron Roberts, and state Assembly Majority Leader Toni Atkins of San Diego will lead the grand opening celebration for Connections Housing, a $38 million makeover of a landmark building in the heart of downtown. What started out in 1928 as the home of the San Diego Athletic Club, and later became the World Trade Center and a spillover site for offices from City Hall, has been rehabbed from top to bottom and will now be home to 223 people from the streets.

Most of those selected to live there will be the toughest cases: the chronically homeless, many of whom are disabled through drug and alcohol abuse and mental and physical ailments. They are the homeless who are the most frequent users of – and put the most strain on – hospital emergency rooms and other public systems.

In addition to the 150 dormitory-style temporary beds and 73 permanent studio units, Connections Housing features an on-site medical clinic offering comprehensive primary care. And there are some three dozen social service agencies offering mental health care and a broad range of support services.

The medical clinic offers a glimpse of the tangible promise of this project. Family Health Centers of San Diego, which operates the clinic, boasts that it can provide care to an average patient for an entire year for $568, while the average cost of a single visit to a hospital emergency room runs $751. If that kind of saving can be achieved on a broad scale, the positive impact would be highly significant.

Officials also promise a significant reduction in the number of people who spread their blankets, tarps and tents on the public sidewalks and in doorways every night, particularly in the central core and Cortez Hill neighborhoods.

Serious questions remain:

• Will the financial savings for ERs and other facilities actually materialize?

• Will the number of people living on the streets be noticeably reduced? After all, the number of people who find shelter at any given time at Connections Housing will be less than one-fourth of the number believed to be on the streets in all of downtown.

• What will become of the temporary downtown winter shelter for the homeless? When the Connections Housing project was approved at City Hall, it was said that the winter shelter would no longer be needed. But nobody believes that now and, in fact, some activists are advocating that it be a year-round shelter.

• Most significantly, will this project succeed in helping a significant number of people get their lives together and get off the streets?

We wish Connections Housing, and the people it will serve, every success. There is much at stake.